When a Roman legion had performed really badly, and its commanders wished to punish it, they would line the men up and select every tenth man to be killed. In short, they would decimate it. That is what "decimate" means. It does not mean that a population [or an area] has been wiped out.
Oh well.
Merriam-Webster, definition 3:
ReplyDeletea :to reduce drastically especially in number
cholera decimated the population
Kamieniecki's return comes at a crucial time for a pitching staff that has been decimated by injuries. —Jason Diamos
b :to cause great destruction or harm to
firebombs decimated the city
an industry decimated by recession
Damn you semantic drift! (Sometimes - as with "decimate"-
DeleteI REALLY wish that linguistic prescriptivism actually worked!)
"The meaning of a word cannot change." "I forbid it."--Robert Paul Wolff
ReplyDeleteIt is good to remember how words were originally defined/understood. It helps give perspective on how it’s use changed through time and culture.
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